Potential solutions to Manitoba’s high school dropout crisis: insights of a high school classroom teacher think tank
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It is a widespread belief in western society today that every adolescent is capable of attaining a high school diploma (Pharris-Ciureja, Hirschman, & Willhoft, 2012). In reality, a Statistics Canada (2012) “Labour Force Survey” concluded that only 73.9% of all 18 and 19 year olds have received high school diplomas. Richards (2009) stated that Manitoba’s high school dropout rate is the highest in Canada, and is twice as high as that of British Columbia. Unfortunately, many adolescents have started on the path to dropping out long before they enter high school (Downing & Peckham-Hardin, 2007) due to a combination of sociological, socioeconomic, cultural, developmental, behavioural, and academic factors (Englund, Edgeland, & Collins, 2008; Pharris-Ciureja, Hirschman, & Willhoft, 2012; Richards 2009). To better understand this phenomenon, I used the critical analytical tool of the immanent critique (Skrtic, 1995); and several different critical thinking tools (Levy, 2010). I also reviewed literature concerning sociology and education, Manitoba’s interpretation of inclusion, and the unique nature of high schools and their teachers. The purpose of this study was to invite Manitoba high school classroom teachers into a think tank and ask them what they believe they do to help adolescents stay in school and graduate. I found that the high school classroom teachers who participated in the study creatively strived to connect with students, worked individually and collaboratively with colleagues, and acknowledged the need for legislation, policies, and administration. They also took the time to examine current educational practices and continuously searched for innovative ways to improve their classrooms, schools, and the system-at-large. I concluded that school systems would greatly benefit from seeking out the voices of high school teachers and asking them what they think.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.045 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".